The Technological Body and The Consumerist Psyche: 15 Top Artworks from Miami Art Week by Chris Dorland

Once a year — the first week of December — the international art world descends upon sunny Miami for what is a week-long convention and trade fair of contemporary art. Galleries from all over the world set up shop, do business and socialize. Anchored by the huge Art Basel Miami Beach fair at the city’s Convention Center, along with smaller fairs like NADA Miami Beach at the Deauville Hotel and the Untitled art fair set up in a custom-made tent right on the beach, the festival is now in its 15th year, and brings together maybe 500 art galleries and thousands of experimental artworks from all over the world.

Contemporary art is often easiest to comprehend in relation to currents and zeitgeist, and the Miami art fairs are a trend-spotter’s paradise. Two tendencies characterize new art in 2016: the technological body and the consumerist psyche. Below is a selection of 15 top artworks from Miami Art Week, artworks that respond to the ever-expanding colonization of our bodies and minds by technological apparatuses and what can be called a “total control society.” Artists today use a variety of materials, techniques and modes of address to poke fun at and ultimately, illuminate and humor us about life in our brave new world.

Reena Spaulings at Chantal Crousel (Paris)

Funny and cute, but ultimately disturbing, Pokemon character painted on Dibond by NYC’s most elusive fictitious painter.

Kandis Williams at Night Gallery (LA)
Images train-wreck as race, celebrity and art history collapse into a singular-body, horror nightmare filled with trauma and humor.

Vikky Alexander at Cooper Cole (Toronto)
Conceived in the early 80’s and produced this year, Aqua Obsession by Alexander shows us a taxonomy of female consumer representations

Josh Tonsfeldt at Simon Preston (NYC)

One of my favorites booths in Miami, Simon Preston presented (among other things) three beautiful, optically disorienting and poetic works by Josh Tonsfeldt that all use LCD screens to filter and obfuscate found objects and photographs.

Two video display monitors showed an advertisement for a corporation set in a (not-so- distant?) dystopian future where bodies have been reduced to hairless, gelatinous monstrosities; these were bracketed by humanoid floor and wall sculptures.

Stan Vanderbeek presented by The Estate of Stan Vanderbeek (NY)

Salon style hanging of collages, xeroxes and 4 freshly restored films ranging over 30 years by experimental filmmaker Stan Vanderbeek were presented by his Estate, which is administered by his children Sara and Johannes Vanderbeek (both established artists in their own right).